Bandolero! Proved Raquel Welch Was Just As Tough As James Stewart Or Dean Martin
Raquel Welch, the electric, multi-talented superstar of culture-rocking films like "One Million Years B.C.," "Myra Breckinridge," and "The Three Musketeers" has died. We're only 46 days into 2023, and it seems like the death of a major star has rocked almost every one of them. Burt Bacharach, Carlos Saura, David Crosby, Lisa Marie Presley, Ruggero Deodato, Cindy Williams — the list, unfortunately, goes on and on.
There's something particularly painful about Welch's death. She was best known in her time as a sex symbol. Parts like the role in "One Million Years B.C." which gave her such cultural latitude also hemmed her into a kind of straitjacket, in terms of roles she'd later be asked to play. But Welch soldiered on, delivering dynamic yet precise performances in everything from whodunnits like "The Last of Sheila" and social thrillers like "Bluebeard."
Her brilliant sense of timing regarding line delivery — comic and otherwise — is still deeply, deeply underappreciated. The first Western Welch ever starred in gave her a chance to showcase her whip-smart canniness with a script — and out-tough some of the rugged riders in the cast.
Western stars
"Bandolero!" is the kind of film they would have called a "roughie" in the exploitation world — shown in grindhouse theaters only after the sun went down. But since it was produced in 1968, as the last vestiges of the studio system came tumbling down, it was in fact the unlikely product of the venerable studio 20th Century Fox. The film follows the sun-bleached travails of two brothers, Mace and Dee Bishop, across the post-Civil War Texas badlands. Played by James Stewart and Dean Martin, respectively, Mace and Dee once fought on opposing sides of the war, but have reunited in the town of Val Verde to rob banks, kidnap women, and escape the noose as long as they can.
Raquel Welch plays Maria Stoner, the wife of a bank teller who was killed in a hold-up by gang lord Babe Jenkins (these names!). Dee ends up taking Maria hostage after overtaking her getaway wagon, and, unfortunately, after a time she falls in love with her captor. The character doesn't age tremendously well, but Welch's performance has only gotten finer with time. As Maria she's alternately fierce and soft, commanding and obsequious — and after the dust of the grand finale shootout settles, she's one of the last of the entire cast standing.
In his biography of the star, "Raquel Welch: Sex Symbol to Super Star," Peter Haining details how the grit Welch portrayed on screen extended long after director Andrew V. McLaglen yelled cut.
True grit
Part of the film was shot in Utah, where the wind whips the salt-encrusted dust up at vicious speeds. During one particularly nasty sandstorm, Haining described how Martin and Stewart were able to shield their eyes with bandanas. No luck for Raquel, who "had nothing to prevent the sand lashing into her hair, eyes, nose and ears." She's quoted afterward as saying, "'That night I must have washed a ton of red sand out of my hair [...] And all day my eyes were watery."
Later, during a shoot in which the actors were meant to cross the Rio Grande at a fork called "Devil's River," Raquel's horse took a brutal fall. She was "thrown out of the saddle" as the horse "stumbled on the hard rocky bottom." But she picked herself right up, remarking later, "'Fortunately I got my boots out of the stirrups as the horse fell, and I managed to get free enough so I wasn't harmed too much. But I did still get a badly bruised ankle and a scratched foot."
Haining notes that the adverse conditions didn't get in the way of Welch's acting circles around her legendary co-stars. It seemed like nothing could have stopped Raquel Welch. She will be greatly missed.